Legal Commentary

A Return to the Reagan Years?

By TChris

Ronald Brownstein, fearful that Democrats will emerge from the November elections with a president and large Democratic margins in the House and Senate, urges Democrats to abide by their duty to govern as if they were Reagan Republicans. This is because Americans are faithful to the ideology of Reagan and recognize that the New Deal represented a failure of ideas. Voters who send Obama to the White House are rejecting George Bush, not Reagan's belief that government is the problem.

The evidence in support of this fever dream goes unstated. Is it not more likely that the public supports Obama because he argues that a responsible government can act to improve the lives of its citizens? Isn't it possible that voters are tired of waiting for wealth to "trickle down" as Reagan-era economic theories (revived on steroids by Bush) promised? It is Reaganomics, not the New Deal, that represents a failure of ideology.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on October 19, 2008 (boomark / email).